There had been a sad revival of the wound of Lieutenant Robbie Shaw, however, the officer who with Dankworth had taken the women across the island for a mudbath. Sally had discovered that open-handed, sociable Lieutenant Shaw lay in the officers’ medical ward with a fever and a distracting pain in his all-but-healed femur wound. Doctors and the matron conferred over his exposed hip, and the redness and swelling which bespoke sepsis.
I wish they’d open the flaming thing up, he told Sally. It’s just a bit of temporary flare-up in there. They can get it out like a core from a boil.
The ward doctor called a surgeon. By now Robbie Shaw’s pulse was racing and he had begun to rave with pain and a fever. An eighth of a grain of morphine was injected every four hours. The wound had cracked along the suture lines and foul matter seeped from within. He was taken to surgery and—with the wound opened up—had some inches of rotten bone cut out of the shaft of his upper thigh. Sally visited him in the post-operative ward and found him depressed and whimsical.
I’ll spend the rest of my life walking like a bloke riding an invisible bike.
But pain regularly distracted him from the issue of his future gait.
Honora developed a pronounced melancholy as notable as her usual elation when Captain Dankworth was sent back to Gallipoli with his artillery battery. He visited his accomplice Shaw before leaving. Sally heard Shaw tell Lionel Dankworth, Well, this buggers me for the artillery.
He was correct about his chances of more campaigning. It was mysterious that he would want it. But it seemed to be an unfeigned desire. No idea of a future profession could console him for not being capable of further gunnery.
The potent rumor arose almost as soon as the women had their new clothes on. There was to be a ship of wounded back to Australia. It took only hours before an embellishment came forth. Some of them were to travel on it. Their Australian matron—now chastened to an amenable tone by the rigors of explaining herself to Leatherhead—soon confirmed that. She read out the names a few mornings later. To show there was no full justice to be found on earth, the list included those with a reputation for giving trouble. Carradine was to make the journey—punishment for the shortcoming of being married. When she raised the matter that her wounded husband was in England, the matron suggested she leave the celibate nursing service and present herself as a Red Cross volunteer. Then, if necessary, she could pay her way back to the Northern Hemisphere and her husband’s bedside. There was no final absolution for Naomi’s rebellions of word and commission. Nettice, for her irregular ward demeanor, was to go too. And some non-offending others. But not Sally. A strange flush of relief ran through her when her name was not read. If she was sent back to Australia, she doubted she could escape again.
I hope I can make my way without you, she told Naomi. And this was not for form’s sake. Naomi seemed quite even-tempered about it all, neither pleased nor displeased.
Who would have thought I’d be the first back to Kempsey? I’ll have to break in our stepmother for you.
Sally became aware—the closer the departure came—that her dependence on her sister had been near absolute from the day the Archimedes sank. Naomi had stood between her and harshness. Without Naomi, she would need to become her own defender and asserter of her own dignity. But it was clear that there was no argument against these shipment orders—no matter how fretful Carradine might be at the idea of putting a world between her and her husband. It was fortunate that Carradine came from a family of means. She could possibly be back in Britain and by her husband’s bedside within three months of arriving in Australia.
The unspoken but deep, sly idea of torpedoes lay as a shadow over the nurses chosen.
Homewards with Doubts
In easterly slanted rain, candidates for the process called repatriation were loaded on launches and barges and taken out to a troopship. On crutches now and with a healing wound was Robbie Shaw and—guided along the foreshores by orderlies—Sam Byers. As they boarded, a black ship from Gallipoli disgorged its sick and wounded onto the pier. A great recycle of soldiers’ flesh was in progress.
On the wharf, the Durance sisters were permitted to stand aside and transact their own leave-taking. They shared an umbrella and wore their gray overcoats, newly provided through Colonel Leatherhead’s marvelous intrusion into their lives.
How long will there be hospitals on Lemnos? Naomi asked as a form of speculation.
There’ll be no end to them, since there is no end to Gallipoli, Sally declared, utterly convinced. For an end to it could not be foretold for this year or the next.
If you are stuck here, said Naomi, then I must do my best to get back. I don’t care if they make me carry buckets of diarrhea for entire shifts. Because you are my sister. And you have been the same person throughout. Steady. No, don’t dare protest. You have been calm and brave and solid. And better able to govern yourself than others have been.
What about your own courage? What about you breaking in to see Nettice?
They were acts of pure ratbaggery. Done out of hopeless anger.
Sally wondered what a person could do when being praised so wildly for calmness and valor. And by your sister! It felt close to being wrongly accused of theft or treachery. She was persuading herself not to say so when she saw Sergeant Kiernan in the line of men waiting for the launches. He was overcoated and carrying a kitbag on one shoulder and the normal duffel bag. He saw them and came over.
You are both about to escape? I’m so pleased.
No, said Naomi. I’m the only one going. I’m not escaping. I’ve been thrown out.
You can describe me in the same terms, Kiernan told them. He looked at the gray bulk of the troopship standing offshore in the gale—and then up the long road to Turks Head—as if weighing all that was about to be lost.
I felt powerless, he said. I knew what was happening to you where you were. All I could do was tell the officers at the rest center and write to my father. He’s a friend of the alienist Dr. Springthorpe who is treating men in Egypt and has a lot of influence. So he wrote in turn to Springthorpe—enclosing my letter. The counsels of impotence. But I hope it did some good.
When he turned his eyes back to the Durance sisters, there was none of the normal humor in his face.
Laws against fraternization, he confessed, were all the rage at our general hospital. And I was cowardly enough to obey them.
You couldn’t have done anything, said Naomi.
I must go back to my fellows, said Kiernan. It will be easier to speak on board, Miss Durance.
He turned to Sally. I do hope we meet again. Though not on this dismal island.
So you’re cured of all those mythologies?
There was a stutter of laughter from him. Yes, they can keep the whole lousy lot of them. I’m sticking to modern history. It seems to be an absorbing enough study to me.
Sally watched her sister’s launch depart the shore. Despite the dimness of the day she also saw it arrive at the bottom of the ship’s stairway and at last the tall figure of Naomi ascending. Sally had once thought of a ship as fortressed against all elements except internal fire. Now she saw it as a flimsy tube—or an egg awaiting the hammer. When Naomi had vanished into the ship she turned away from the bay and climbed the hill to be ready for the ambulances now beginning to roll along the pier. We’ll all grow old in our work, she decided. She felt aged already beneath the low, malicious clouds.